


Keep Breathing

by sparxwrites



Series: Lifelines [4]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Cybernetics, Mad Science, Manipulation, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:16:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2233773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I saw what you did to Xephos.”</p>
<p>Ridgedog whirls around at the voice, draws his sword in a too-familiar motion – and then relaxes when he realises it’s just Lalna, perched atop a crafting table and swinging his feet like a small child. The motion makes an irritatingly random pattern of thumps, and Ridge scowls as he sheathes his sword again. “Stop that,” he says, ignoring the way Lalna pouts at him as he stills his feet. “What are you even doing up?"</p>
<p>(In which Lalna is - mostly - a scientist at heart, and also not even <i>approaching</i> mentally stable.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Breathing

“I saw what you did to Xephos.”

Ridgedog whirls around at the voice, draws his sword in a too-familiar motion – and then relaxes when he realises it’s just Lalna, perched atop a crafting table and swinging his feet like a small child. The motion makes an irritatingly random pattern of thumps, and Ridge scowls as he sheathes his sword again. “Stop that,” he says, ignoring the way Lalna pouts at him as he stills his feet. “What are you even doing up?”

“What are _you_ doing going through our chests at past midnight?” retorts Lalna, before ducking his head a little. He looks almost _embarrassed._ “I, uh. Don’t have a bed.”

Rather than question why, after nearly a year here they _still_ don’t have a bed – or why, if he lacks a bed, he doesn’t build one or find somewhere else to sleep – Ridgedog simply nods. “If you must know, I’m checking no one has any red matter hidden away in storage somewhere,” he says, slowly shutting the chest and listening to the click as it locks again. “After Sips and Sjin’s little… _incident_ , I’m rather eager to make sure nothing like that happens ever again.”

There’s a note of strain in his voice, and Lalna remembers the last time he heard Ridgedog sound like that. Remembers _I can’t stay connected long enough to fix this_. Remembers Xephos’ eyes glowing unnaturally bright (even for him) and the way he hadn’t been able to stop shaking afterwards as his eyes had dimmed. Like someone coming down from a high.

He wonders, briefly, how much it took out of Ridgedog to fix the wormhole.

A lot, judging by the dark circles still under Ridge’s eyes and by how determined he is to stop that particular mistake from being repeated. Other than that one night with Xephos, Lalna’s never seen Ridge look anything other than flawless, let alone something as mundane and mortal as _tired_.

“Fair enough. You won’t find any red matter here. Lots of uranium, though, so watch out for that. Radiation poisoning isn’t fun.” Lalna grins brightly and Ridge looks at him, _properly_ looks at him this time.

He looks… ill is probably the best word, hair visibly greasy despite being scraped back into a straggling ponytail, dark bags under his eyes and a fresh, shiny burn streaking a welt down one cheek.

Lalna’s always looked a little ill, the whole mentally-unbalanced-mad-scientist thing not exactly being conducive to a particularly healthy glow, but this is different.

There’s a faint smell of infection in the air. When Ridgedog glances down at the power glove that covers Lalna’s right arm up the elbow, the metal looks _fused_ to the skin there, white scars spiderwebbing up from the join.

“I made the most of an industrial accident,” says Lalna when he notices the staring, shrugging carelessly. “This hand’s _much_ more useful than the last one.” He flexes the spindly metal fingers of it with a slight whirring noise, grins delightedly. “I’ve got a built-in plasma canon now!”

It takes a special kind of madness to be excited about losing an arm on the basis you can replace it with dangerous weaponry and, judging by the grin on his face, Lalna has it in spades. “Anyway, like I said. I saw what you did to Xephos. With the heart thing.

A little thrown by the sudden topic change, it takes Ridgedog a moment to gather his thoughts enough to reply.

“What are you going to do about it?” he asks eventually, casually, leaning against the now-closed chest and raising one eyebrow. “Tell the others? Tell the police? Try and kill me? I can guarantee that last one won’t end well.”

Lalna giggles.

It isn’t exactly the reaction Ridge was expecting. For a second all he can do is _stare_ at the way Lalna’s shoulders hunch, at the way he curls in on himself as he laughs. “No, no! Why would I do that?” he asks, looking genuinely confused, and Ridgedog finds himself wondering if he perhaps somehow underestimated the depths of Lalna’s insanity. “No. I was-” He pauses for a second, looking suddenly almost _shy_. “I was wondering if you could do it to me.”

Ridge’s mouth doesn’t quite drop open, but it’s a near thing.

“…Why?” he asks, tentatively, as Lalna’s a loaded weapon, a bomb ready to go off – something on a hairpin trigger that might explode at the slightest provocation.

Lalna shrugs. “For science?” he says, grinning and licking his lips a little anxiously. “I’m curious. It looked- it looked pretty cool.”  
“I stuck a hand inside someone’s chest, ripped out their heart, and ate it, and you think it looked _pretty cool_?”

Ridge wonders wildly, for a second, if he’s found his soulmate – wonders how he’d never noticed, before, just how deep Lalna’s crazy ran.

Instead of disbelief, Lalna takes his words as hesitancy. “C’mon,” he whines, kicking his feet again and scratching at the thin scraggle of beard on his chin with his mechanical hand, wincing a little as he jars the join between metal and skin. “You’ve got to be hungry after dealing with the wormhole. I’m a willing sacrifice. Is that what it is? A sacrifice to you? Are you a god?”

There’s something in Lalna’s eyes that makes Ridge feel a little like he’s being visually dissected – or about to be strapped down and _actually_ dissected.

“Yes,” he says, slowly, a little cautiously. “It’s a sacrifice.” His smile widens, and he blows an absent breath up towards his forehead when his curl dislodges and ends up hanging over one eye. He very carefully doesn’t answer the second question.

Inhaling sharply, Lalna’s face splits into a delighted grin. “Does that mean you’ll do it?” he asks, clutches the edge of the crafting table he’s perched on hard enough that his metal hand turns a section of it to splinters. “Oops. Still uh. Working out a few of the kinks.” It’s not entirely reassuring, or exactly the sign of a sane mind.

That doesn’t matter, really, though – Ridge’s fairly sure sanity is overrated.

“Yes,” he says, closing the distance between them in three long steps, coat flaring sharply behind him. He doesn’t miss the way Lalna tenses at his sudden proximity, licks his lips as Ridgedog stares at him, head cocked, trying to decide how best to proceed.

He decides, eventually; puts a hand on Lalna’s chest over his heart, and another against the side of his face. His thumb rests flat against Lalna’s temple, fingers pressed under the solid line of his jaw so he can feel the rabbit beat of his heart. Lalna watches him the whole time, swallowing hard, a faint flush colouring his cheeks – although it’s hard to tell whether it’s one of embarrassment or fever, considering the less-than-healthy state the scientist seems to be in.

Another breathy, anxious giggle, Lalna’s pupils dilated wide enough that his iris is little more than a thin strip around them, and Ridge is beginning to think that _science_ isn’t exactly the whole reason Lalna wants this.

“I swear, if you start getting off on this, I’m going to be so disturbed,” mutters Ridge, winces when Lalna just giggles again.  
“Too late,” he says, grinning, and Ridgedog groans quietly, hopes he’s joking and deliberately doesn’t look down.

Instead of even bothering to respond to that, he presses his hand a little more firmly over Lalna’s chest, digs his fingers further into the soft flesh under Lalna’s jaw and over his temple until red half-crescents appear as he breaks through the skin. “Lalna,” he says, calmly, anchoring the power he needs to keep Lalna alive and conscious in the blood against his fingertips. “I need something. Will you give it to me?”

“You sound like you’re trying to seduce me,” says Lalna, still giggling, and Ridgedog growls with frustration. He sends a shock of power through his points of contact with Lalna’s skin until the scientist’s laughter turns high and breathy with pain.   
“Yes!” the scientist gasps, still grinning, head tipped back against the wall. “Yes, yes, I’ll give it to you.”

“Good,” hisses Ridgedog, and shoves his hand into Lalna’s chest.

The crack of ribs breaking beneath the pressure of it makes Lalna wince, involuntarily, the wet sound of tearing skin and flesh as blood bubbles up around the intrusion triggering some kind of primal fear instinct that even he can’t quite ignore. He doesn’t manage words, but exhales shakily, worries his lip between his teeth until it splits wide and bloody beneath the pressure.

It takes him a second to realise what is so _weird_ about the whole thing.

“Why doesn’t it hurt?” Lalna sounds vaguely offended by that, for some reason, catching Ridge’s wrist to prevent him from pulling his hand out – symbolic, considering Ridgedog could overpower him without a thought. He prods at the ragged edges of skin around the newly created hole in his chest, wrinkles his nose at the blood that ends up coating his fingers and rubs it off on his lab coat with a careless gesture.

Sighing, Ridgedog indulges Lalna’s curiosity, keeping his hand still and curled around the heart in its grasp. It’s still attached, beating frantically against the stress and the strange signals that Lalna’s body must be struggling to process, working harder and harder as the blood empties slowly from his body. He can feel it fluttering against his palm. “I’m keeping it from you,” he says. “I mean, you said you wanted to be conscious for this, so…”

“I want to feel it!” says Lalna, instantly, his voice edged in a whine and his lower lip stuck out in a bloodied pout. He kicks his feet against the crafting table, looks for all the world like a small child having a temper tantrum – over the fact that he can’t feel _pain_ , of all things.

Ridgedog knows there are several good reasons that he shouldn’t indulge Lalna’s demands, but in the face of the continued irritation that is his constant whining, he can’t actually remember any of them.

Perhaps the pain will shut him up.

He can pinpoint the exact second sensation returns to Lalna in a tidal wave by the way his pupils dilate and his mouth drops open in something that might have been a scream, had he managed to find any air to put behind it.

“Ah, ah, ah- fuck- fuck!” His nails, chewed blunt and ragged, skid off of Ridgedog’s skin as he claws at it, fingers becoming slippery from how bloodsoaked Ridge’s forearm is. His metal fingers don’t fare any better, don’t even leave scratch marks despite the filed-sharp ends of them.

“Fuck- fuck-” He doesn’t even have the breath to laugh, everything crushed and twisted inside of him to the point he can’t physically inhale, every inch of him lit up with a bright flame that he can’t seem to think past. His mouth runs on autopilot, wasting precious air with panicked swearing and gasping as Ridgedog laughs.

He takes the pain away again, snorting amusement as Lalna’s yelping trails off into wounded whimpers and short, hitching gasps, his eyes wet with unshed tears that he swipes away with an irritated gesture. “I told you so,” Ridge sing-songs, smirks at the way Lalna glares. “Can I move my hand yet? I’m hungry.”

“…That- that was incredible,” breathes Lalna, and there’s blood on his lips, dripping out the corner of his mouth as it slowly fills his lungs and is exhaled in a fine mist. “Oh my god.” He tries to laugh, manages a wet, bubbling noise and coughs up a mouthful of blood over his chin, choking on it. “Oh my _god_.”

Ridge sighs and rolls his eyes, pulls his hand out of Lalna’s chest and wrenches the heart with it. For a long second, Lalna convulses, hands tightening into fists and back bowing as his body struggles to deal with the sudden lack of a vital organ. It takes his body a moment to switch over, to rely entirely on Ridgedog’s power – there’s no pain, but there’s a sensation close to ice that curls through his veins, alien and alarming.

“I- I don’t need to breathe,” he manages eventually, voice thick with shock and an edge of delighted hysteria to it.

Ridgedog hums thoughtfully, nods, licks at Lalna’s heart in an experimental sort of way.

It tastes coppery, bitter, not as good as Xephos’ but still uniquely delicious and humming with power. “I’ve taken over for all your vital systems now,” he says, flexes his fingers against Lalna’s skin where they’re still pressed to his face. “Your body’s pretty much shut down.”

“Oooo.” Lalna grins, tries to suck in a breath of air on reflex and then twitches when it does nothing to ease the mild sensation of oxygen deprivation. He raises the hand still made of flesh, hesitantly touches his own shoulder, and then slowly slides towards the messy hole in the middle of his chest.

When he dips his fingers into it, blood thick and slowly congealing as it drips from severed arteries and veins, Ridge feels the shudder that runs through him from where his fingers are still pressed to Lalna’s face.

Lalna runs a fingers in a circle around the inside of it, hisses when he cuts himself on a ragged-edged fragment of rib. He tests the softness of one exposed lung with careful, methodical gestures, grins wide and bloody, delighted with the ability to explore the inside of his own chest.

The look of fascinated awe on his face is enough to make even Ridge feel uncomfortable. He’s not one hundred percent sure, but he _thinks_ mortals are supposed to have enough of a sense of self-preservation to find this sort of thing horrifying rather than exciting.

Apparently, he thinks, as he watches Lalna hook a finger into the torn-open vessel of his aorta – left gaping and dripping a steady stream of blood by the removal of his heart – this one doesn’t.

“What do you do now?” says Lalna eventually, and looks up, reluctant. He removes his hand from his chest and wipes his fingers off on trousers already stained with oil and dyes and other, unidentifiable but unsanitary-looking, substances.

Ridgedog simply brings the heart to his mouth and tears a small chunk off the corner of it with perfectly straight, white teeth, groaning happily. He chews, swallows, and smiles wide to show teeth stained with blood, and enjoys the way Lalna flinches.

“That.” There’s a small strand of sinew caught in the gap of his teeth, and Lalna swallows hard when Ridge cleans it away with a small flick of his tongue.

“You… don’t even cook it?” he asks, and even to him his voice sounds very small. He visibly bristles when Ridgedog laughs, shaking his head as if Lalna’s something small and ignorant.  
“I’d burn all the life out of it!” says Ridge, sounding almost offended. “No, no. That sounds gross, I wouldn’t _cook_ it.”

He takes another bite out of the heart with a soft noise of pleasure, grins wider with bloody lips at the way Lalna flinches again. “Don’t tell me you’re getting squeamish now, Lalna?” he asks, amused that out of _everything_ , it’s the cannibalism that upsets him. “Honestly.”

“I’m not squeamish!” Lalna sounds offended, forces himself to watch the next mouthful Ridge takes and realises it doesn’t actually turn his stomach as badly as he’d thought it would. It’s oddly fascinating, actually, watching what he knows is his heart be slowly consumed.

“Can I… try a bit?” he asks eventually, curious.

“No!” The word comes out as a snarl, and Ridgedog bears bloody teeth at him before he catches himself, pulls himself back into a semblance of control. “No. Mine.” The words are sulky, a darkly possessive edge to them that belies the childish front Ridge pulls up by default.

Lalna pouts. “But it’s my heart!” he points out, runs a finger around the shattered mess that is the hole in his chest, shivers at the sensation.

“Not any more.” Ridgedog takes another bite, bigger this time, and swallows it without chewing. Lalna’s eyes track the shape of it passing down his throat until it’s in his chest and out of sight. “You gave it to me, remember? I asked for it, and you said yes. So now it’s mine.”

He shrugs at the look of disappointment on Lalna’s face. “It wouldn’t do for you what it’s doing for me. You’re not-” He pauses, not struggling for words but deciding how much to give away. “You’re too mortal,” he says, instead, laughs at the offended look on Lalna’s face. “I can show you what it feels like, though.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer.

By the time Lalna comes back to himself, gasping, the ability to form words temporarily taken from him, Ridgedog has finished the heart. He’s licking the blood from his skin, one arm already clean, tongue working its way steadily around his crimson wrist. “Hello again. Welcome back.”

The light clears slowly from his eyes, dirty and trickling, and Lalna thinks he might understand what it feels like to be a butterfly pinned to a board.

He inhales sharply, chokes on his breath as he realises he needs to breathe, scrubs furiously at his face with shaky hands to try and force his brain back to functioning. It’s only when the dried blood on his hands starts to smear that he realises his cheeks are wet with tears

“H-holy-” he manages, swallows hard. “Holy crap.” His voice is shaking, along with the rest of him, and he barely notices that the hole in his chest has been healed over again and his clothes repaired, as if nothing had ever happened. “Is- is that what you did to Xephos?”

Xephos had been shaky for a _week_ after the wormhole, flinching at shadows and snapping at everyone and wandering around like a ghost, gaunt and pale. The shadows underneath his eyes had been dark enough they looked black, the usual luminous blue of his irises dimmed. Lalna had assumed he was overreacting, worrying for no reason as per normal, but if _that_ was what it had been like for him…

If he’d had _that_ inside his head, had to deal with the wormhole while the entire _world_ tried to tear his brain apart, Lalna’s surprised he’s not a gibbering wreck.

“It wasn’t quite as strong then.” Ridgedog shrugs. “Sacrifices are like…” He sighs dreamily. “I’m not really sure there’s an equivalent. They’re _fantastic_.” He slips his thumb into his mouth, sucks the last of the blood off his hands, smiles with a slightly distant expression. “Delicious.”

Lalna’s not quite sure how to respond to that. “Thank you? I think.” He’s never been called delicious because of his blood before – never been called delicious full stop.

Ridgedog laughs, stretches a little in an unsuccessful attempt to burn off some of the excess power biting at his skin to get out. It doesn’t work, and while Lalna tries to remember how his muscles work and how to stop trembling, Ridge tries to find a way to dissipate the worst of the fizzing, crawling energy.

He finds it in the faint smell of decay when Lalna runs a slightly more steady hand through his hair, and the cuff of his lab coat slides down to show metal joined to too-white skin.

“Do you… want me to heal your arm?” he offers, more curious about the answer than genuinely concerned – but Lalna helped him, offered up a more than willing sacrifice when he needed it, and it seems only fair to return the favour with something as minor as a healing.

No one can say that Ridge is not a loving god, doesn’t care for the mortals under his protection.

Sometimes, at least.

Lalna, instead of looking pleased, looks horrified. “No!” he says, clutching his mechanical hand to his chest and eyeing Ridgedog with a betrayed sort of air. “No, I _love_ my arm. Why would I want to replace with a boring old human one again?”

“I meant the infection.” Ridgedog calmly tugs at his arm, ignores Lalna’s whining to pull it away from his chest and press fingers into the scar-marked flesh above the metal. He feels the softness of it, the unhealthy give of steady decay. “You do realise your arm’s rotting from the inside out, don’t you?”

“It is?” Lalna looks faintly surprised, but not particularly bothered; barely even flinching, though the contact must hurt. “Oh. I mean… it’ll probably be fine, won’t it?” He shrugs, grins. “The radiation poisoning will probably get me first – or it’ll get rid of the infection for me.” There’s a slightly deranged look in his eye, moreso than normal.

Ridgedog realises that although Lalna may be a mad scientist, he definitely is _not_ a doctor.Instead of arguing, which he suspects will get him nowhere, he fixes the problem. It takes a second, barely a drop of power, and Lalna doesn’t even notice.

He might need more hearts in the future, after all, another sacrifice or two. Or a hundred. He’d rather have a willing volunteer for them, after all, considering how much sweeter it makes the blood taste.

“Probably,” he says, letting go of Lalna’s arm and trying not to laugh at the way the scientist clutches it to his chest again, pets the metal fingers gently like they’re some kind of timid animal. “Well, thank you for that, Lalna. That was certainly… enlightening.”

He’s not lying, not even being sarcastic. His new knowledge of exactly how deep Lalna’s madness runs, the exact nature of it, is useful. Very useful.

Lalna giggles. “Uh, you know. Any time! It was pretty fun, really.” He licks over the cut on his lip, the one injury Ridgedog hadn’t healed from the whole incident, giggles again. “Always happy to help.”

He watches as Ridgedog rolls his eyes and takes a step back, brushing his hands off on his coat with an oddly businesslike air.  “Bye!” he says, knowing what’s about to happen, raising his human hand to wiggle his fingers in a vague farewell. “It’s been fun! Have to do it again sometime.”

Ridge laughs, blows him a kiss, and spins on his heel. He disappears in the space of a moment that makes Lalna’s eyes ache with the _wrongness_ of it.

As soon as he’s gone, though, Lalna digs a hand into a pocket of his admittedly rather battered lab coat, and pulls out a journal. It’s only small, but it’s bound in a soft brown leather and filled with creamy, expensive-looking paper.

By the looks of it, Lalna cares for it better than he cares for himself. Compared to his clothes and general appearance, it’s practically pristine.

He flicks through it, past pages labelled _Xephos_ and _Honeydew_ filled with extensive notes in neat, if cramped handwriting. Past pages with _Sips_ and _Sjin_ and _Kim_ , past pages with less information titled _Zoey_ and _Teep_.

Past a page titled _Rythian_ in shaky cursive, underlined several times, filled with a tiny and almost unreadable scrawl that spills over onto another page in its enthusiasm and sheer volume.

There’s notes on everyone, their physiology and biology and background, meticulous in the way only a scientist can be. Eventually, though, he finds what he’s looking for – _Ridgedog_ , underlined just once, neat and unassuming in the upper left hand corner of a blank page. Carefully, resting the book on his knee and holding it still, he presses a pen dug from the recesses of a pocket to paper and begins to write.

_-Consumes hearts to gain power. Requires consent – some form of sacrifice._  
-Healing, resurrection, brain-things.   
-Power transfer? (Ask Xephos)  
-Susceptibility to Red Matter

After a brief pause for consideration, he adds a small mark between _consumes_ and _hearts_ , writes _raw_ above them. Adds, in brackets, _cooked does not work_ afterwards.

Admittedly, they’re not the most comprehensive notes in the world – but considering how limited his information is, they’ll have to do. After all, he’ll have more to add to them soon enough, if luck is on his side.

He has a few ideas involving Red Matter that he’d like to try.

Finished, he waits for the ink to dry before closing it, slipping it and the pen safely back into one lab coat pocket with a nervous half-laugh – more of a high exhale than anything else – and looks around.

He’s half-afraid that Ridge will be standing behind him; half-afraid he’ll feel a hand through his chest again without the pain being numbed, without the resurrection, for his audacity. There’s nothing with him in the room other than the machines, though, their low thrumming and thumping enough to calm the elevated beat of his newly-restored heart.

On the basis that no one disturbed him and Ridge, he’s fairly sure Xephos is _finally_ asleep – an inevitability, given that he’s fairly sure his work-partner’s been awake for nearly five days solid now. At this time of the night, Honeydew’s probably asleep in his bunker, maybe out tending to the cows if he’s feeling particularly restless.

Either way, it leaves Lalna the only one awake in the bunker, making it the _perfect_ time to do some tinkering.

He hops off the crafting table with a smile, rifles through the chests, grabs a wrench and a handful of basic materials, and heads down to the fusion reactor in the basement – humming delightedly the whole way. The notebook burns a hole in his pocket, mind alight with ideas.

Today has been a _good_ day.

**Author's Note:**

> (i am so ashamed pls no one look at me.)


End file.
